February 28, 2008

Is the end coming?

The year 2012 is suddenly in the news. Will it be worse than Y2K? Let the hype begin.

12/21/12: The end of the world as we know it?Four years, nine months and three weeks may be about all the time we have left on Earth. Why? Dec. 21, 2012, marks the end of a 5,000-year cycle by the Maya Long Count calendar. To some, this spells doomsday (disaster scenarios include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions caused by solar storms, cracks forming in the earth's magnetic field and mass extinction brought on by nuclear winter). To others, it carries the promise of a new beginning. And to still others, 2012 provides explanations for unsettling developments (e.g., the disappearance of bees) that seem beyond our control.

While all this has largely been a hot topic within alternative cultures, the 2012 phenomenon is slowly trickling into the mainstream. At least four new books on 2012 have appeared in bookstores in the wake of the 2006 success of Daniel Pinchbeck's "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl." This month, Sony won a bidding war for disaster-movie king Roland "Godzilla" Emmerich's apocalyptic script "2012." And this Saturday, 2012-ers will converge on Hollywood for a day-long conference devoted to the subject.

"There's a real hunger for this kind of knowledge," says 2012 Conference producer Christian John Meoli. Meoli takes a more optimistic view of the date, referring to it as "the Shift" (the conference's slogan: "Shift Happens"). "It's easy to manipulate people with fear," he says. "I wanted to stay away from the gloom and doom."

Among those appearing at the conference will be "Return of Quetzalcoatl" author and psychonaut Pinchbeck, who describes 2012 as "a window of opportunity to change civilization."Comment: Let me be the first to predict that nothing of earth-shattering significance will happen on December 21, 2012. The world will be pretty much the same on December 22, 2012.

Who's right: multitudes of ancient and modern prognosticators, or Rob? Come here on 12/22/12 and find out.

9 comments:

Writerfella here -- The psychiatrist Carl Jung noted that, with each ascent of the next astrological sign to the zenith, a new human philosophy was born to replace an older human philosophy. With the ascension of Pisces to the astrological zenith, the Christ figure was born and acknowledged, and very soon Christianity evolved and displaced Zoroastrianism. Now, we have the rise to the ascension of Aquarius in the new millennium. "The End Of The World" therefore ONLY applies to Christian philosophy, as the new human philosophy has been born that will displace Christianity. It is the "End Of The World" for that human philosophy, period. What is coming, the rest of the world only has to wait and to see. It will occur within the lifetimes of most of the readers of this blog...All BestRuss Bates'writerfella'

I see something here that smacks of Eurocentrism, in as much as the "EuroMan" you refer has been fixated on the Middle East as the source of spirituality.

It is interesting that when you look at the history of Zoroastrianism, its moment of being "supplanted" came in the 7th century when the Muslims invaded the Zoroastrian lands. In fact, the areas of Zoroastrians and Christians have had little overlap (in places like the Caucasus).

Zoroastrianism, as such, remains today pretty much supplanted by Islam.

If Jung was in fact doing this, he was badly mangling multiple religions and history.

Writerfella here -- You miss the point entirely. Because of the precession of the earth, no sign of the zodiac exactly enters the zenith on a regularly calculable basis. It may be 1300 years, or as much as 3,000 years. Check your Carl Sagan. Thus, the tale is true, and Jung has had the last laugh...All BestRuss Bates'writerfella'

Writerfellahere -- Rob, you have mistaken Mayan prophecy with Western philosophy. Carl Jung was Germanic, a EuroMan, but modern psychiatry and psychiatric studies mostly are based on his writings. Mayan writings may have preceded Jung by 800 years, but that doesn't mean he used those writings in his own permutations. In fact, Jung only was commenting on what he observed as the human condition while he was alive. Bet you can't interview him, therefore, on what he really saw...All BestRuss Bates'writerfella'

Whatever the mind is, no person has contributed more concepts to its study than did Sigmund Freud. Not all of his ideas turned out to be accurate, but they generated so much interest in this field that other scientists turned their attention to psychological research. That is why he is considered the father of this area of study.